Guild Wars 2

I think you main problem is wanting the weapon set of your choice to be perfect in all game modes/situations + your stats are really atrocious. Ofc you feel useless, IPHIW is too strong in you.

Gallant Pigeon.5807:

Would definitely suggest runes of strength if you can afford them. Build some might stacking into your build if you can, its a very effective dps boost. Between eating Bowl of Orrian Truffle and Meat Stew and using the power of inertia trait, I’m usually self stacking a constant 6-10 might. Chuck in a sigil of strength and its more like 10-15 stacks of might.

The issue I had with rage / pack was that you had to get hit to proc the bonuses, something you generally want to avoid. Its also worth noting that 175 power (strength /scholar/pack) will usually give you a lot more dps than 175 ferocity from rage.

Maybe scholar for PvE….. The problem is the last bonus will rarely proc – keeping health above 90% is not easy.

Rune of the ogre isn’t bad if you are looking for something cheap.

Whole party will hate you if you take ogre runes into a dungeon.

Silentshoes.1805:

I cannot 1v1. I am older and my reaction time just seems too slow now.

Is it viable to be a “support thief” who takes uncontested nodes when possible, and otherwise uses the shortbow for dropping poison/weakness on team fights, and bursting low-health enemies in the teamfight?

I feel your pain. I totally fail in 1 vs 1.

asterix.9614:

OK kind of like the traits I am using at the moment, I am using a full dire condi (I know cheeseXD build, im new to thief), but what gear stats to use…….. Any link to the build using p/d +d/p together would be a boon.

Ty

The magic is in the traits, I recommend trying 2/0/6/0/6 instead of rejecting the very advice you asked for.

I wonder at which point S/D became from okay set that only few used to the ultimate counter to all.

Knighthonor.4061:

How do I shadow step stump? I seen people do it, but don’t know how it works.

Start stomp, shadow step away and step back when the stomp animation is about to finish.

Sandrox.9524:

The only thing good about ranger is RF,and thats about it.The ranger playerbase is also very low,most of them are bad at pvp.

This.

Once a ranger learns how to cancel RF and when to swap to melee, his pvp skills skyrocket.

I don’t usually have problem telling where that reveal comes from, wvw traps have huge tell, I normally hear sic em too. What bothers me more is that I sometimes get revealed while in stealth, doing nothing to put reveal on myself. Yesterday I fought an engi, I dropped SR, hopped in, got stealth, then I saw reveal icon on me (yeah while having stealth icon on too) and my stealth lasted only 3-4s. No stolen junk ticking to get me revealed.

misterman.1530:

What roxybudgy said. You want to constantly PvP, then PvP. I don’t go out of my way to roam and fight for the sake of fighting. I roam to scout, flip camps and sentries, and escort yaks. Maybe cap bloodlust. I don’t go looking for fights.

If you don’t want to pvp, don’t go wvw cos there are actually people looking for folks like you.

At least they have some runes :P

At least the forum is a bit more alive now, it got really quiet here after RF buff.

While Silver is raging here over hs dmg, I noob in wvw with my thief ele. Those two were lvl 80 thieves.

mango.9267:

Jana.6831:

@mango:
Ok, ty – your shortbow is still listed as soldier as well though.
Good, one backpiece less to bother about – I don’t really like to farm all this stuff as well, it’s ok for weapons but clothes are much more annoying.

Ah, yeah, because I mostly use SB defensively. You’d be surprised how many times the sudden health/armor increase + extra dodge have saved me when I swap. Zerk is also a good choice for SB if you plan on using SB more.

Don’t you find yourself in situations when you are in SB, very low on HP and swapping to your main set would really help but if you’d do that, you’d lower your vitality enough to get yourself downed?

Condi engi complaining about thieves? Reminds me why I run around wvw mostly offline these days.

LS stealing 2 boons would destroy boon spam builds. Thief having boons for days vs naked guardian/ele. But I think LS stealing one, removing 2nd boon would be fine.

Aggrostemma.1703:

Jayden Ennok: and did anybody say that every elementalist must be an ambidexterous octopus to play ele well? I usually link this thread for a newby. Solid damage… Survability… Easy to play… Effective…

But they have to get better quick…

Somewhere between the lines where I quoted someone talking about not playing if it involves a bot type gameplay and where I described the build almost same way the OP did, your “lets defend no matter what” kicked in. Feed your dog instead of burning witches.

I have a simple suggestion. Since it’s purpose for the ranger is to create distance and add some CC, make the skill CC the enemy/mob and the ranger would roll (could even have evade built in) backwards.

pros – less frustration for non-ranger playerbase and rangers will have more friends
cons – no more lolz knocking people off cliffs

silvermember.8941:

I haven’t played your build but I love builds that are non standard and not rotation based. IF I wanted to play like a bot, I might as well not play at all.

A rather amusing comment considering this build requires sitting in one attunement, pressing 1 skill on wep bar and using signets as they go off cd.

Sickness.9831:

Tman.6349:

B/c people like running other things for point control reasons in pvp I guess would be a reason. The AoE of Daggers and staff would be another reason. The ‘no-target’ nature of dagger’s blast finishers makes it easier to frontload the damage even if it makes less during an extended fight. The high survive and damage from the meta dagger build makes taking a ranged and more defensive oriented option redundant to some. Are these enough or do I need to go further? None of these things make S/x “not ‘viable’”. (Viable=/=optimal for any given situation.)

viable= playable in top tier play without crippling your team.
S/x isnt “viable”.
actually i think thats enough to prove everything you said against it invadlid. dk.

and i think its a “balance the game” thread…nerfing thiefs possibility to shut almost every other zerker stuff out of the meta and nerfing D/D eles is part of it.

these comments really remind me of why i dont like posting in the forums, but like reading them….
ppl claiming to know what is going on without even understanding what is being talked about

…
sry did only read the first sentence, too lazy to read more tho

That’s what most of your comments show, lack of understanding and a great deal of arrogance. Some people here give much better ideas on how to make scepter viable than you, which is rather sad considering you play on one of the top pvp teams.

OP, zerging/winnig all the time does get boring after a while, I started on Blackgate and decided to move just after a month of wvw’ing. Been on Vabbi for 1.5yrs now and I guess I still have some server pride for Vabbi, even tho I do rant a lot when vabbis get wiped by same size group.

Hvaran, the chat is so toxic on SFR these days that even veterans that don’t mind queues get tired of reading that bs 24/7.

Your build has nothing you could call excessive dps, in fact, you dps is so low if you start hitting a yak at the camp you might kill it by the time it arrives to SM.

Get valky/cav gear at least and use hidden killer.

the key words are run away, if you are against 2 cc heavy builds

EDIT: I just had to add some rant at devs cos of AE, cos its is a horrible trait that completely fails in its application.

Anet devs told us this trait is a “high skill” trait, in reality they expect us to react to incoming cc by 1. stealthing up (most skills/combos have casting time) and 2. breaking the stealth (most skills again have casting time). Add some latency, the fact that a human needs time to actually register that enemy is executing a skill. When you combine all, you are nowhere to being actually able to REACT to inc CC, you have to PREDICT it.

So essentially devs think that players of thief class should have some sort of future vision skills to use their traits effectively.

People go nuts with CC especially when a thief GOES INTO stealth. They want to avoid backstab and just randomly CC around them – I get a lot more with 2pts in SA for blinds on stealth than with stability for 6pts.

I would love to see a vid where devs show us how they effectively use AE in pvp, not just CnD off a golem and stabbing it.

Khenzy.9348:

Well, to be honest, I don’t know how can you be having troubles with mesmers specially, thieves are kind of a counter to them. The stolen Plasma is elite quality. Their GS’s AA does crappy damage on melee unless they are abusing the stow weapon glitch and the illu zerker is easily avoided and never lasts long enough for a second attack on a shatter mesmer. They just can’t handle someone instaporting to them their whole encounter and your sword’s AA pressure, so they are always popping their shatters soon enough. Setting up a shatter combo on such a slippery thief is incredibly hard for them.
If you’re getting dazed just dodge away, shadow step, infi signet… If it happens to be a rupt mesmer with immob traits, just save your stun breaker+withdraw for that. Really, you have all the tools you need to handle even the best mesmers around.

If you’re not asking advice on how to beat zerker guards, engineers or how cele elementalists can tank you forever, that implies you can handle them just fine? :P

Thieves are a counter to mesmers but we can still die to them. Mesmers in pvp are zerkers just like us, when a thief makes a mistake, he can be bursted from 100% to 25% HP in one combo so it’s not that surprising that some thieves have problems with mesmers.

OP, everything needs practice and it helps to go over what you did that led to your death and find the mistakes. Try changing how you fight a particular class, always consider the situation – sometimes it’s a waste of time to fight someone (even if it’s a class you should kill first) and be unpredictable.

To add to advice mentioned above:

Mesmers – don’t forget S/D has access to stealth with CnD, althought not as good as in WvW (due to lower CnD dmg in pvp), it still deals dmg to the mesmer and gives you stealth (you don’t always fight on point so even pvp stealth can be good). If you use bow, you can SB 3 heavy dmg attacks and when mesmer goes into stealth, target one of the illusions and autoattack it, the attack bounces even to stealthed targets.

Rangers – the attack you should really really watch out for and dodge is the knockback. When you get knockbacked, you HAVE TO break it to avoid RF but if you dodge/evade knockback, you can do same with RF without wasting your stun breaks – keep those if you screw up, not for the very first knocback that comes your way. Use LoS as much as you can and when he pops his invulnerability, just wait it out – either CnD or sword 2 away.

D/P thief – you can hit what you can’t see, it’s harder but possible. If he goes into stealth near you, then he’ll most likely go for backstab – you know when and where he’ll be to backstab you. Autoattack and then dodge/evade/CnD 2-3s later (but don’t waste all your resources on evading non stop). To interrupt his stealth combo, I either use steal or CnD when he is near me and autoattack him from behind when he is standing in the black power, about to leap. Same effect, slightly longer daze and I save my steal. When the thief keeps leaping from BP towards me, I sometimes use CnD as he is leaping (in HS range) and I get stealth off him.

From what you wrote, you use SR, it’s very useful to learn to dodge/cancel withdraw with weapon swap inside your SR.

KingMango.9785:

You can spot them in many ways like if they use meta builds. Weapons and titles, too.

You don’t need to hide if you’re a beginner. People who ask to get better are the ones that will get better.

Just play and have fun. Watch some pvp guides on youtube or even the beginner thread above in this forum.

Communication is good. Especially before the game starts. But since “Everyone is so pro” it’s not always a sign.

I never used a title in gw2 and despite having several finishers, I still use the basic one.

gartz.7013:

i think the problem is that channeling skills continue tracking you in stealth….if that got fixed id be happy that a ranger can keep its Gs/machinegun build

No, the problem is thieves’ self imposed reliance on stealth to counter a ranger, instead of using other class skills that reflect or a simple dodge/evade.

Atherakhia.4086:

If anything, maybe the changes will encourage other classes to stop running around in full berserker gear. Though even this is unlikely given how easy it is for the other berserker classes to rip through a Ranger and nullify the range advantage they have.

I’m honestly surprised that as powerful as RF now is, so little has honestly changed other than we actually see Rangers more often (but not any more successful).

Buffed dps on RF certainly won’t help improve the level of skill among ranger players cos that’s the main issue with the class. Most leveled their characters without ever needing to dodge or counter their enemy and they have no clue about how to fight another human. That includes even many ranger players with high wvw rank that I’ve seen around for ages, no noobs that flooded the class after it got buffed.

Perfect example is a fight with ranger I got into yesterday. I used dagger storm when he started RF, he noticed the dmg and countered the reflected dmg with his invulnerability (LOL just LOL) instead of cancelling the channel. Then he proceed to shoot every skill he had available into the DS.

90% of players are attracted to the class for the simple pew pew playstyle it can be played with, the reputation of the remaining 10% is doomed cos of this.

Genlog.4983:

…. but a thief can always attack first so you always have the upper hand in fights

That is certainly not why a thief has advantage in fights with ranger.

Enjoy the tears and make him cry more!

Gnat.9405:

I think this is kind of misleading. While it’s true that thief, like any class, can fill any role, in reality thieves in PvE are most considered for their DPS output. Sure stealth helps in runs but if a thief is in the group it’s likely because of DPS, every time. That being said, to get the most out of thief you’ll want to run with DPS gear and the learning curve can be difficult depending on what you’re used to playing.

Most of dungeon groups ask for thief if the path is easier with stealth skips. What others think about thief dps best describes what happened to me recently in AC – me (thief), ele, 3 warrs (1 × 15k AP + 2 x noobs that looked like in blues/greens). The 15k AP warr got all kitteny at me for picking ice bow, apparently either him or one of the other warrs should use it cos of “superior dps”. I come across this attitude quite a lot in dungeons with pugs. I am not talking about people who usually pre made their groups and know all about pve, I am talking about average players.

Thief is top dps in dungeons but only with fully buffed party, without those buffs, thief dps isn’t that amazing.

MattressDrayke.9318:

So im wondering, how are thief’s overall. like how are they in wvw, pvp and dungeons. And with wvw I know that thief’s roam, but how about when they are with a zerg?

PVP – thieves are alright there but they are expected to roam/cap and turn 1 vs 1 into 2 vs 1.

PVE – they are fine here too. Thieves are generally expected to know their class and the relevant pve content perfectly. If you try dungeons with thief and have low AP, you are more likely to be kicked on join since thieves die rather fast and people prefer classes that won’t take dirt naps all the time.

WvW – this is where thief shines (in roaming) due to stealth and high mobility. Good in team fights, rather weaker in zergs since we are squishy and random aoe can kill us fast. Thieves usually pick other squishies in the backline or camp a bow.

pdavis.8031:

I like condi builds. Call me a noob if you want, but I love my condi necro. Even in PvE. Granted it’s value is lessened considerably in a group setting (i.e. dungeons, world bosses) but great for solo. In PvP and WvW is where they really shine though. Most people tend to take higher toughness and vitality in those for a bit more survivability, but the counter to those is conditions. I love taking down bunker builds with stacks of bleed from my necro.

Regarding solo pve, it’s rather intersting how fast I am able to kill mobs with conditions even on a pure power build. In wvw, if I make anyone sit in stolen engi skill for 2-3s or get torment on them, it still hurts a lot (again on pure power build).

2/0/6/0/6 is nice for larger team fights (wvw) since it has the sustain of full SA and the utility of trix. I use S/D and D/D, and it works really nicely with both sets. I tried it for dueling a friend of equal skill as mine, he lost every single fight when I was using 2/0/6/0/6. When we both used this build, the fights took ages, the win rate was approx. 50/50.

I think 2/0/6/0/6 is stronger than the standard D/D build but it lacks the dmg to kill some bunkers and relying on a sigil procs/shadow reju isn’t my thing.

Thieves are great in dungeons as long as they know what to do.

Try S/D ele for nice burst, that’s what I play these days when I want to see some tasty crits.

Enemies alt f4? Great! But what ticks me off is that they can just queue for pvp and get away while I get no xp/loot.

Most of the times I hear “spy, spy, spy” in wvw/eotm it’s when commanders are absolute kittens and that’s the easiest way to blame someone else for their fault. In eotm, some add that the group that just wiped them was a guild group, everyone ignores the fact that the enemy group was a 50 man zerg full of upscales and random guild tags. It’s amusing how many zerglings prefer to live in sweet ignorance.

It’s all nice there are side exits or other maps but in match ups like the one OP is in, even if you leave, the maps are either completely empty or there is a huge zerg chasing you. I play wvw for fun, not go work my socks of to get around the result of huge population imbalances. That’s not my job.

The trait is awesome, a natural thief killer as thieves are usually squishy and LR crit can take 30-50% of their HP alone.

If you ever use rams in wvw, LR procs on each fear tick (at least it did the last time I used a ram). That’s 3-6k dmg on each tick if it crits.

I got staff prec from a gate guard and dusk from dredge on EB. The dusk dropped on the day my guildie wanted to buy a prec for his legendary, I don’t remember which one he wanted to craft but he didn’t complain about changing plans :P

It’s just Anet’s way of telling thieves we shouldn’t be able to stomp, I mean, first they gave sword 2 cast to stop us from using it for stomps, then BP nerfed. I believe someone from Anet even said thieves should bring pistol offhand for stomping (when the sword 2 nerf hit us). What next, SB 5 disabled when near downed enemy?

Option 1 – I have no idea how that would be achievable without giving all classes stealth.

Option 2 – This would change nothing in terms of how much thieves stay in stealth.

Inf signet >>>>>>>>>> roll for ini in pvp.

Hard to advice, in pvp your role isn’t 1 vs 1 unless necessary, you should turn your team mates’ 1 vs 1 in 2 vs 1 instead.

The reason you do well in 1 vs 1 servers and not in pvp could be the simple fact that for 1 vs 1 people pick different builds than for point capture. The pvp in this game isn’t really that much about pvp like about bunking on points.

You should either get 3pts in acro or 6 in trix for the interrupt.

I prefer heavier look for my human male thief.

Peow peow.2189:

a warrior hit me for 14k today – what the hell is this

My ele loves thieves in WvW, I can burst them down so fast that some even avoid me. 16k on medium armour player isn’t uncommon, my max hit so far was 23k on lord when I was flipping tower.

Thief lost its burst a while ago.

Kirby.1564:

Tree.3916:

Have you considered skipping this optional boss?

have you considered reading my post?

“very few if any 1 tries to kill him any more so he is wasted. either take him out of the game or make him take less than 1 and a 1/2 hours to kill.” skipping is what people do and it makes him a waste of space

You don’t have to kill all mobs in pve and if you consider the troll a waste of time, why not just skip it. I don’t want dungeons empty with only few packs of trash mobs and some bosses that are necessary to kill.

Stooperdale.3560:

The troll in AC explorable is fine. The same troll in AC story really is worse than annoying for newbies! As far as I can remember, when AC explorable was revamped the cave troll from explorable got copied into story and he’s way tougher than anything else in story.

Troll in AC story is problem for newbies cos they have no idea how fight it and they think they have to kill anything with red HP bar. Lvl 80 with functioning brain can kill it really quickly but if the whole party are newbies, they wipe few times, some rage quit and those who stay often just give up after trying to find new party members. Same happens with the lover bosses, new players don’t realise spamming skills with confusion on kills them. The recently dumbed down leveling system certainly doesn’t help with this.

shimmerlessEU.6841:

Portal isn’t even remotely comparable to SR in terms of usefulness. It is a huge sacrifice on the Mesmer’s part (SR costs a Thief absolutely nothing). If I may be frank for a second, and without intention to divert the thread off-topic too much, Portal has really held the class back while SR has always been a painless option. It was the case back when “combat Portal” on a half minute cooldown used to exist and it’s still the same now.

Mesmer logic – all mesmers have is totally useless while our opponents are uber op and it requires a great deal of skill to kill anyone as a mesmer. Everyone should feel sorry for us and praise our persistence in playing such a underpowered class.

This is why mesmer posts are one of the most toxic ones and often lack any sense regarding class/skill balance.

McWolfy.5924:

Btw asura camwra is too low. In wvw sometimes its a serious disadvantage

If my asura stands too close to wall, I can’t see almost anything, 80% ground, 20% wall. It was a shock when I switched from norn to asura, as my norn can see names of enemies on wall just fine if standing in same location.

Bella Kim.4061:

@ Narkodx.1472
I play Triple Kit Condi Engineer and it is not kittenous build
I have 4 different weapon skill sets ( 1 main + 3 kits )
each set has 5 different weapon skills
which means I had to study and practice and utilize 20 different weapon skills
I have to precisely execute 20 different weapon skills at the right timing
some of them have long cooldowns so I cannot just mindlessly blow skills
and also I must keep track of cooldowns of 16 different weapon skills ( #1 = no cooldown
not only this I must utilize 4 different toolbelt skills
and supply crate cast time is not instant
this makes stunning multiple targets without getting interrupted very challenging
Ive never played thief but I think I know what Dagger Pistol thieves do
5 – 2 – 2 – 2 – 2 — 1 – 1 – 2 — 5 – 2 – 2 – 2 – 2 — 1 – 1 – 2 — 5 – 2 – 2 – 2 – 2
and I think I know what Pistol Dagger thieves do
F1 – 5 – 1 – 1 – 5 – 1 – 1 – 5 – 1 – 1 – 5 – 1 – 1 – 5 – 1 – 1 – 5 – 5 – 5 – 5 – 5
these dire thieves pressing only 2 number keys fighting toe to toe with my 3 Kit Engi
just ridiculous

What is ridiculous is how easy is to play condi engi even for a complete noob, I for example, still struggle with the turret heal and I literally spam skills that are off cooldown, yet stuff dies. I will read the tooltips one day.

What weapon set do you use? If it’s x/D, just CnD as much as you can, preferably off the mesmer to deal some dmg, and then I go for backstab. CnD is not as effective in pvp tho, the dmg is reduced there. Shortbow is quite good against them too.

Fighting mesmers is pretty much a hide and seek game, outstealth them untill you find a good opportunity for your burst. I think that’s why I don’t like fighting mesmers, going aggressive on them usually kills me.

Btw, you are not first mesmer gone thief that has problems fighting other mesmers.

I’ll like to see that sort of dps list as well – since the usual tests include party buffs (max might/vul) but people assume same dps can be achieved on individual level.

DoomKnightMax.6592:

Its so hard to pick between S/D and D/P.

Why not play both in the same build, S/D and D/P work well together.

DoomKnightMax.6592:

Why don’t thieves run bull berserker gear or berserker assassin mix? I’m used to running around with a minimum of 50% critical change even at the cost of a bit of vitality. I also don’t like having to need a signet for mobility, so how do traveler runes look on a thief, or is that a dumb idea?

Well, thieves don’t need high crit chance that much if they use hidden killer and most people prefer to have extra survivability. Traveler runes are okay, you lose some dmg but it’s not that bad.